


The Boy with the Rat

by Misswhy



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-12
Updated: 2010-07-12
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:52:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misswhy/pseuds/Misswhy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek was pretty sure he had Spencer Reid figured out.</p><p>AU, people have daemons and Derek has a crush on Spencer Reid</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy with the Rat

  
**Title:** The Boy with the Rat  
**Rating:** G  
**Pairing:** pre-slash, Morgan/Reid  
**Words:** ca 890  
**Summary:** AU, people have [daemons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_\(His_Dark_Materials\)). And Derek has a crush on Reid  
**Note:** Inspired by Astolat's amazing _[sing the song without the words](http://intimations.org/fanfic/idol/sings%20the%20song%20without%20the%20words.html), _especially about how a same-sex daemon means that the person is gay.

**

Derek was pretty sure he had Spencer Reid figured out.

Take Mo, the kid's painfully shy rat daemon, which Derek had only ever seen the tail or whiskers of - Derek didn't actually even _know_ Mo's sex, had never heard Mo say a single word; the rat practically lived in Reid's pocket.  
Yes, Derek did know it was a myth that a person's daemon was a perfect reflection of that person's true inner self, but there was a lot of truth in it. He knew that Rao's, his own grey Cane Corso mastiff daemon, and his own mood and mind were intimately woven together, inseparable.

And Mo was easily the most timid daemon Derek had ever seen.

*

That was not to say that there weren't still things about the kid that Derek just didn't get.

E.g., the silence.

Rao and Derek bantered all the time, shot the shit when things was slow. Derek never understood how Reid, who would talk anyone's ear off given a subject that had just a faint glimmer of interest to him, could be so quiet with his daemon. They didn't speak to each other _at all_, Reid just carried the rat around in his pocket, like it was a _pet_.

Like it was a _thing_.

It was one of the many reasons why Derek and the rest of the BAU, when Reid first joined them, had suspected him to have some kind of autism. They had long since abandoned that particular theory, in the face of Reid's obvious intuition in the field (but it was still the collective consensus in the BAU that Reid had the social grace of a brick wall).

And it was still damn weird.

*

 Typically, this was where Sikka, Hotch's black snake daemon, who was just a tad more gossipy than her human counterpart, but had no less integrity, would interupt the conversation and today was no exception.

"Leave it alone, Reid and Mo's personal life are none of our business," she said -hissed, really- and with that, the discussion was back to it's original track, to Derek's dismay.

He and the girls -both the three human ones _and_ the female daemons- were in the break room, which of course was the unofficial gossip hub of the BAU. It was a quite large room, but then, the BAU had an unusual amount of quite large daemons. Besides Rao, who was easily 110 pounds, there were Korr, Gideon's raven, Vari, Elle's wolf and Nimor, JJ's eagle. Garcia's chameleon, Jax, was practically dwarfed next to them, but that hadn't stopped him from making a racket yet, and at the best of times, the break room was like a small zoo. At worst, it was a freaking circus.

(...maybe it wasn't so weird that Mo hid in Reid' pocket all the time. After all, in nature, a good deal of the before mentioned animals wouldn't hesitate a second to make a quick meal of a small, defenseless rat.)

They were between cases and they were bored. Reid had hidden away in the archives, looking at cold cases and Hotch and Gideon wasn't here either, but their daemons would much rather gossip than go to boring meetings, so Sikka was on her own, under her heat lamp, and Korr was perched on the bird post next to Nimor, and the conversation flowed all the more freely between Derek and the girls and the daemons.

"Back to your pathetic attempts at flirting," Garcia said firmly, "I'm not sure what you're saying, chocolate stud. On one hand, you know very well just how shy Reid is, on the other...?" She gestured for Derek to continue.

"I don't know, baby girl-"

"Yes, you do." Rao said, a deep rumble from under the table, where he was lying up agains Derek's legs. The taboo about touching other people's daemons made JJ, Elle and Garcia all curl their legs back under their chairs, which was kind of rude of Rao, but he had never cared much about other people's space. Derek had never tried to make him change that habit - he knew it was one of Rao's many, unconscious ways of protecting him, and he didn't need to look very hard at himself to know how much it meant to him.

"I'm with Rao here," Elle said, "I'm pretty sure you know _exactly_ what's going on with you and Reid."

Derek bit his lip. It had seemed like a good idea to ask Garcia for advice, when it had just been the two of them in the break room _freaking__ ten minutes ago_. But gossip traveled faster than light and what had started as a confidential chat was now a damn interrogation with half the department as spectators.

"Look, " JJ said, in her typical mild manner, "Reid is still extremely uncomfortable around all of us on the best days, even with Gideon, so... maybe you should just focus on becoming better friends with him first? And not just... jump him?"

"You mean... wait?" Derek said, pained. From the floor, Rao barked with laughter.

"Yes, _wait_," Elle said. "Maybe even a couple of years, until he has grown up a little."

"Maybe Derek just _like_ them young and clueless." Rao said, still snickering. Derek kicked at him, not hard.

He could still feel the weird phantom sting in his own ribs.  
**

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language, feel free to point out any mistakes (I'll give you cookies!)


End file.
